Everything You Should Know About Remote Training
Training had already taken its place in the online world much before the pandemic struck. Many companies had adopted the method for the ease of learning and providing freedom to the learner to learn at their own pace and time without affecting productivity. Post pandemic, this became a necessity for every business, big or small.
Though the companies have adapted to the situation but have been facing challenges. If we have challenges, we do have solutions also. As humans, we have the capability to evolve with time in all scenarios. The same applies to training and the diversified methods of training being used to keep the employee engaged keeping the business needs and office culture alive. Let us take a look at various prospects of training.
What are the challenges?
The shift from working from a completely set up workplace with all the required infrastructure and technology in place to working from home is very challenging. There are many aspects and elements that need to be shifted. In such a scenario, training the employees also becomes challenging. Keeping the business and employee needs, consider having the right learning management system in place.
Working in an office setup gave us a sense of belonging and staying connected was easier. In an online scenario, you work alone. The training platforms must fulfill this need for collaboration. Though you work remotely, yet having virtual group discussions and participation in group activities helps the employees to stay connected with each other.
To effectively implement the remote work environment, L&D departments also need to upgrade and upskill themselves. By implementing a robust learning management system does not suffice for the trainers. They too need to be mentored on how to effectively implement the available features to maximize the benefits and yield the required returns.
In remote training programs, effective communication might become a barrier, and ensuring that the employee is benefitting from the program is one of the major challenges that the shift might bring in. Developing and designing the training programs that will foster company culture and foster trust amongst employees is one of the key areas that become necessary to incorporate in every program and communication.
Remote working also brings along the challenge of getting distracted easily. This is equally true for online training as well. Ensuring and reinforcing that the employee should work and learn from the quiet corner that they should dedicate for work and their attention remains undivided.
Technical glitches are bound to happen in online scenarios. The reasons can be many, like poor internet connection, software bugs, and so on.
Benefits of remote training
The traditional classroom training is lengthy and at times exhaustive. Also, the employee’s productivity gets affected. The interest in attending the classroom training slowly diminishes.
The learning pace of every learner is different. The introverted learners might not feel engaged. With the implementation of online training, you can easily overcome all these challenges. The trainees get bite-sized information that can be accessed on any device. The learner can learn at their own pace and at their comfortable time. A thorough and online engaging course can help in increasing the productivity of the employees.
- Personalized learning experiences: By exploiting your LMS features, you can remove specific learning challenges that the employees might face. This not only keeps them engaged but provides them with a personalized learning experience. Such learning without distractions helps to boost the employee’s productivity thereby contributing to the growth of the business.
- Knowledge retention: As the information provided can be in the form of small modules, it becomes easy to digest and retain. Online learning also provides you access to all the modules anytime anywhere, even for future references. When in doubt, these online training modules act as the knowledge base for the employees.
- Focussed learning: A well-designed online training program acts as the perfect tool to enhance particular skills to fill the knowledge gaps. Online learning provides leverage to the learner to choose and focus on the required topic at one point in time. Planning and incorporating a good skill development course becomes easy as the learning schedule can be easily accommodated in the day-to-day schedule. Having complete control of your schedule empowers the employees which in turn improves their efficiency tremendously.
- Learning continuity: Pandemic has taught us many lessons and one of them is the employees stay longer with the organization that focuses on their continuous development. The only options available are online training and learning programs. By providing an array of courses, employee retention and engagement becomes effective and easier. The courses can be a mix of skillsets development in general and job focussed skill sets.
- Strategic approach: Before even rolling out the program, providing detailed information on various little aspects saves the learner from getting lost in case of confusion or issues. Information like where can you find the material, whom to approach for doubts, where to find the assessments etc. Chat support can be helpful and will support the learners giving them confidence providing them a touch base so that they don’t feel lost and drop the program mid-way.
- Cost-effective: The traditional training brought along a lot of administrative and logistical overhead expenses, not to forget the productive time. Collectively, the training becomes an expensive deal. On the other hand, providing online training saves on all these overhead costs as there is no travel, meal, or stay cost involved. The schedule becomes flexible and productive time does not get affected. The bulky training material gets replaced by online content that is easily accessible anywhere, any time. You just need to either opt for off-the-shelf courses that are very cost-effective or if you want to create your own courses, at the most you are required to hire an instruction designer to create the bespoke training program. In a nutshell, implementing the remote training platform for less money and the return on investment often compensate for the one-time expenditure.
To get the maximum benefits of remote training, one can implement the following types of remote training methods:
- Self Learning: Learning at your own pace and convenience surely is fun and more productive
- Knowledge Bank: The curriculum might have bullet points or brief descriptions about topics. To get a better understanding and elaborate description on the topics of their choice, the readily available online knowledge bank can be a useful ready reckoner.
- Video Conferencing: An easy and effective way to stay connected while learning and discussing. This sometimes can fill in the gap of missing human connection as one had while working from the office.
- Shared Document Storage: This method leverages the employees to easily access and share the information from any and every device irrespective of geographical location.
- Webinars: Participation in online webinars provides a platform not only to gain visually effective information but provides a platform for discussion and knowledge sharing. Issues like isolation can be dealt with by such methods to some extent. This method also helps in engaging the employees by participation feeling valued.
- Gamification and Simulation: Creating real-life scenarios in the form of interactive games has proven the most engaging way of learning remotely. The assessments are done through this method ready the employees for the practical scenarios with much more confidence. This confidence-building method reduces the chances of failures when the methods are applied in real-life scenarios. Such learnings are not only fun but are retained for a longer period of time.
- Screencasts: By sharing the videos, presentations prepared by recording videos and sharing the same as the content of tutorials is known as screencasts. The learner has the option of replaying and recapturing the learning. This technique is beneficial for employees who cannot digest large amounts of information at one go.
- Podcasts: Every employee has a different learning method. Some learn via text, some through videos, and some by listening. Podcasts are the best learning method for the third category. This feature also leverages the learner to get back to the lesson and listen to the tutorials as many times as they want and whenever and wherever they are comfortable.
- Traditional methods: Phone calls and emails are the best ways of communication and providing solutions to individual queries and doubts. The support team can be made available all the time through this method.
- Social Media: Chat forums, Slack, social media groups are one of the effective ways to share knowledge and clear doubts. The information shared can be real-time as well, especially in the scenarios like group discussions, brainstorming, quizzes, etc.
Conclusion:
The sudden shift from work at the office to work from home might appear very challenging, However, investing in the right tools like the Cornerstone LMS that is SCORM compliant, can lead to a more efficient and productive team. By encouraging employee collaboration and focussing on the benefits of online learning will boost your confidence. Leveraging the diversity in learning methods will increase employee involvement providing the feeling of being connected with the colleagues.